Local Delegation to Visit Kotlas
By Gregor Smith
 Waterville Mayor Paul LePage and Kotlas Mayor Sergey Melentev shake hands in Melentev's office in August 2005. For many more pictures from the Kotlas visit, see our Summer newsletter. |
In August, twelve area residents, including Waterville Mayor Paul LePage, will visit Kotlas, Greater Waterville's sister community in Russia. This delegation will be the first large group of Mainers to go to Kotlas since August 2002, when eleven people made the trek.
The delegates will depart on August 1, and will return sixteen days later. They will spend two and a half days in Moscow before taking the daylong train ride to Kotlas. During their six days in Kotlas, the travelers expect to meet public officials and businessmen, tour historic sites, and enjoy the hospitality of their hosts. They will also stay four days in St. Petersburg after their Kotlas sojourn.
Their visit stems from an invitation last summer from Kotlas's then-Mayor, Alexander Shashurin, to his Waterville counterpart. The Kotlas Connection brought Mayor Shashurin and four other Russians to Waterville in June 2004, thanks to a grant from the Library of Congress through its Open World Leadership Program.
As a result of this invitation, Paul LePage will become the second Waterville mayor to visit Kotlas; David Bernier made the journey during his tenure as mayor in June 1991. Mayor LePage will be participating in the first half of the trip only, returning to the United States after visiting Moscow and spending four days in Kotlas.
Also in the group will be the co-founder of the sister city effort, Peter Garrett, and his daughter Jessica. In April 1989, the two Garretts and the late Natalia Kempers became the first Americans to visit Kotlas since the Bolshevik Revolution. That visit made possible the establishment of formal sister city ties fourteen months later.
Besides Paul LePage and the Garretts, the delegation will also include Herb and Nancy Foster, Carl Daiker, and Phil Gonyar, all of Waterville; Ellen Corey of South China; Gregor Smith of Belgrade; Ron Turcotte of Augusta; Joanna Hopkins of Norridgewock; and Linda Rennebu of Cherryfield.
See pictures of the trip and read written reminiscences by the delegates!
Kotlas Connection Serves Borscht to the Masses
Despite a mid-afternoon thunderstorm and power failure, the Kotlas Connection served up Slavic cuisine to titillate the taste buds at the Voices of the Kennebec Festival. This celebration of Greater Waterville's diverse ethnic heritage took place this Saturday, June 4, from noon to 6 p.m. at Fort Halifax Park in Winslow.
At the Kotlas Connection table, we offered borscht, both with and without meat, kielbasa, sauerkraut, bread, rolls, and dessert. We also sold Russian Christmas ornaments and other handmade Russian knickknacks.
Now in its sixth year, the festival moved across the river to Fort Halifax this year because of construction of underground utilities for the redevelopment of Head of Falls. Besides our Russian treats, the festival featured Lebanese, Franco-American, and Latin American food and a variety of exhibits. Four different ethnic bands provided a musical backdrop.
Middle School Students Sample Russia
By Herb Foster
On March 21, the Kotlas Connection held its thirteenth annual Russian Sampler at Colby College. As some of you may know, we work in conjunction with Sheila McCarthy of the Colby Russian Department to provide a day of immersion in all things Russian for central Maine middle school students.
Approximately 30 session leaders organized presentations for 140 enthusiastic students, who arrived with their teachers and parent chaperones at 8:30. The students came mainly from eight different schools, mainly in the Waterville area, but also from as far away as Damariscotta and Newcastle.
The students attended classes in a variety of subjects, including history, government, cooking and conversational Russian. The students also enjoyed the hands-on workshops that we offered. There, participants were introduced to Russian crafts such as egg painting, spoon lacquering or fashioning items from birch bark.
For the first time some high school students participated this year. A group from Lincoln Academy in Newcastle, where a Russian program has been added to the curriculum, attended with their teacher, a native Russian.
Unfortunately, two invitees from Kotlas, a teacher and a student, had not received their visas in time to join us for the day, but we did have five exchange students on hand from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia to represent the "teenage viewpoint."
. . . And in Kotlas, An American Sampler!
On April 18, the Waterville Committee in Kotlas held its first annual American Sampler. Modeled after our Russian Sampler, the event was designed to expose Kotlas schoolchildren to American culture.
The Waterville Committee, which is the sister city organization in Kotlas, timed its Sampler to mark the sixteenth anniversary of the first meeting between residents of Kotlas and Waterville. That meeting occurred in April 1989, when Peter Garrett, his daughter Jessica, and Natalia Kempers visited Kotlas.
Sixty-five students from all fourteen of Kotlas's schools attended. Among the presenters were five teachers and fifteen future teachers. The latter, all aspiring English teachers, were students of Tatyana Shelygina, an English teacher at the Archangelsk Pedagogical Institute in Kotlas, where the program was held.
The program started with an assembly conducted by the chairwoman of the Waterville Committee, Irina Reznichenko. After singing two American songs, Zina Yegorova gave the group the background of the Waterville-Kotlas relationship, and Lyuba Zinovkina spoke about American youth. The students were then greeted deputy mayor Andrei Bralnin.
They were then divided into six groups for "master-classes" in American English, America on the Internet, American songs, patchwork quilting, and cooking. In "American English," the students learned the difference between the British pronunciation that they learn in school, and the American versions of the same words. Then they all took turns at reading a British text with American pronunciation. In "Songs", they learned the American colonial classic, "Billy Boy." And what do you think that they prepared as an American dish in "Cooking"? You're right if you guessed hamburgers! Also in "Cooking", Inna Tushina and Zina Zelyanina gave their impressions of the American way of eating and other popular foods here.
Every group attended three classes, and then was given a chance to share what it had learned with students who had taken other classes. Everyone who participated had a wonderful time, and asked the Waterville Committee to organize a Sampler next year. Here's the best part: a film was made of the Sampler and it will be ready for us when our citizen's delegation visits in Kotlas in August. The Kotlas Connection expects to present the film at its annual meeting this fall.
Most of the adults who took part in the event have visited Waterville. Indeed, Tatyana Shelygina and Lyuba Zinovkina have both been guests of the Kotlas Connection at past Russian Samplers. English teachers Inna Tushina and Zina Egorova have both been to Waterville twice; Andrei Bralnin was part of the official delegation last June; and Zina Zelyanina paid a private visit to pen pal Ellen Corey last September. Through their combined experiences in the U.S., we know that they were able to give their students a realistic picture of American life.
The Russian Sampler and American Sampler articles are adapted from ones that originally appeared in the Bulletin From The Kotlas Connection Chairs, Issue #18, May 2005, by Phil Gonyar and Herb Foster.
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